


Little Cold Feet

by MariaJonsson



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariaJonsson/pseuds/MariaJonsson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ned has just returned from the Greyjoy Rebellion. He desperately wants to have some alone time with his wife, but with the new baby and the boys excited to have him home there isn’t really much time. He finally loses it when he keeps finding Sansa asleep in his wife’s bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Cold Feet

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: All mistakes are my own since I have yet to find someone to read this over for me. I wasn't sure about how to rate so I apologize if it isn't quite what you expected. Hope you all like it :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing all characters and background belong to George R.R. Martin. This is just for fun.

Not again, Ned thought as he entered his wife's chambers and noticed a head of red curls on his pillow, and not the head he wanted to see.

Although he loved all his children dearly, his patience was wearing thin. This was the ninth consecutive night that he had found Sansa sleeping in his lady wife’s bed, on his side! Cat hadn’t gone to bed yet and was sitting in a chair near the crib, holding Arya to her breast. She looked up from the babe when she heard him groan

“Something troubling you, my lord?”

“Is it not high time Sansa started to sleep in her own chambers again?” he grumbled.

“I think she might be feeling jealous of Arya. For Arya gets to stay here and she cannot, and I never have the heart to turn her away,” Catelyn replied, as she got up from her seat, to put Arya down in her crib before lacing her dress again.

Ned walked over to her, and looked down into the crib to admire the latest addition to their pack, but like with Robb, Ned had been away when Catelyn had gone to the birthing bed. Although, Arya’s birth had been more difficult than Robb’s or Sansa’s, it was still considered to have been an easy birth, according to Maester Luwin. Nevertheless, from what Ned had seen with Sansa, he couldn’t even begin to imagine what a difficult birth was, and had been very relieved to hear that both mother and child were well.

Arya didn’t seem to be completely out after feeding and was staring up at her parents, as they stood over her crib. Ned reached in and stroked a finger over her cheek and then her head, over her downy black hair. Her eyes started to drop, although she seemed to be fighting it, only closing her eyes for a few moments, before trying to open them again, finally she appeared to lose the battle and her eyes closed.

Ned stroked a finger over her cheek one more time before looking over to his wife. She was looking at him with those Tully blue eyes, so full of love. Her long red hair was loose about her shoulders, and not for the first time he wondered what he had done to deserve such a beautiful and devoted wife. Unexpectedly, he felt a bit sorry for his youngest daughter, for she had received his plainer looks, while their older children had been blessed with their mother’s more delicate features.

He took a lock of Cat’s hair in his hand, swirling it around his finger before letting go. He leaned over and kissed her briefly on the lips, putting his hands on her hips, pulling her closer to him, so that he could kiss her properly.

They stood there for a few minutes, just enjoying the feeling of each other. One of his hands had travelled up to her sensitive breasts, just applying light pressure as he backed her up against her vanity, pushing the chair in front of it to the side. Once he had pushed her up against it, she abruptly put her hands, which had previously been pulling him closer, on his chest, pushing him away.

She was breathing hard and her lips were swollen, the laces she had already pulled closed were once again open, and her left breast had nearly fallen out of her dress.

“Ned. We can’t,” she whispered, her hands still on his chest as if she were afraid that if she would let him come closer she would not be able to control herself.

“Why not? It has been too long, and Luwin said it was fine, that sufficient time had passed since the birth. Furthermore, we have already lain together since I’ve been home.” Ned felt his cock twitch at the thought of the welcome he had received.

Catelyn had clearly missed him as much as he had missed her, and though it had only been two moons since she had given birth, he had taken her thrice that night, and once again as the sun rose the next morning.

She blushed at his words and the pretty colour reaching all the way down to her chest. “It is not that I do not want to, but we cannot with Sansa in the room, for I do not think either of us wants to explain this to her if she wakes, or to Robb. Because you know she will tell him.”

Ned sighed and took a step back from Cat, looking behind him at their daughter, making a swift decision that he knew Cat would not at first agree to. Before Catelyn could say anything, he walked over to the bed, and lifted Sansa into his arms and walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Catelyn asked, when he was about to open the door.

“I’m taking her back to her room, she is almost three and it is time she started sleeping in her own bed. Robb had already started sleeping in his own bed by the time she was born.”

“That’s different, at least Robb had someone to sleep with.” Although she was trying to defend Sansa, her words were bitter, and he knew she did not approve of Jon and Robb sharing a bedchamber, and only relented because Robb had always sneaked into Jon’s chambers after they had left, so it had been easier just to let them share, especially while they were still so young.

“She will be fine. Her nurse is next door and it is only down the hall,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring, “If she wakes up, she knows where you are.”

Catelyn started to protest, but the words died on her lips and at last she nodded her head, coming over to place a kiss on their daughter’s forehead, and another on his lips, before letting them go.

Ned walked over to Sansa’s chambers and pushed open the door, placing Sansa in the middle of her bed. Just as he pulled the furs around her, her blue eyes opened and she stared up at him.

“Papa, why we here?” she looked around and then gazed up at him.

“Your mother and I thought, now that you’re such a big girl, it was time you started sleeping in your own chambers, like your brothers,” he said in a gentle voice.

Sansa sat up in her bed with a serious look on her sweet face.

“You late, I wait forevers,” she said, crossing her little arms over her chest.

“What do you mean, sweetling?” he asked, smiling at the sight of her arms crossed and her eyebrows knitted together in frustration, resembling her mother even more than ever before.

“I wait for you, but you always late and I sleepy,” she said with a pout.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were waiting for me, if I had I would have come sooner,” he said, as he tried to place his arms around her, only for her to push him away, shaking her head.

“No. You never have time to see me, just Robb and Jon, and little Arya, all night. Do you not like me too?” she said, staring up at him with watery blue eyes, a tear running down her cheek, and he couldn’t help reaching over to her, but she was still having none of it.

“Of course I like you just as much as your brothers and sister. I love you all very much,” he said, trying to comfort her, but still she pulled further away.

“You go away a long time, and now only see Robb and Jon, never me, and I wait for you, but you takes really really long time.”

“I’m here now. What did you want to do? Do you wish to hear a story?” Ned asked. Catelyn had written to him of Sansa’s love of tales and songs, especially those of handsome princes and daring knights, and so he hoped he could bribe her with a tale.

Sansa looked at him and leaned her head to the side as if considering his offer. “A nice story with a maiden and a knight,” she asked.

“I think I can manage that,” Ned answered, trying to recall the stories of his youth.

The words had barely left his lips before she had jumped into his lap, wiggling around trying to get comfortable. Ned picked her up and sat himself on the bed with her in his arms, and again she started squirming around before finally sitting comfortably on one of his thighs. He was about to start when she began to pull on his tunic, trying to get her little feet underneath his clothing.

“What are you doing?”

“My toes cold, and you always so warm,” she said, as if it was a well-known fact.

Then he recalled from these last few nights when he would wake up in the night with something ice cold pressed against him in the night. He had figured it was Catelyn, since she often got cold. Apparently he had been laying the blame on the wrong redhead.

Ned started a tale Old Nan had often told him and his siblings, when they were young, and as he spoke, he took Sansa’s feet in his hands and tried to rub some heat into them.

Ned walked down the hall towards Catelyn’s chambers and slowly opened the door. Some time had passed from him leaving Cat and for Sansa to fall asleep, and he managed to put her down on her bed again, and so he was not surprised to see that Cat had fallen asleep.

He took off his clothes and got under the furs next to her. He was almost asleep when a hand sneaked over his stomach and Cat whispered in his ear.

“Did you lose your way, my love? Should I have alerted the guards that you had gone missing?” she asked, and although she was half asleep, he could hear the laughter in her voice.

“No need for that, my love. I was reasonably safe with our daughter,” he explained as he leaned over her, and placed a kiss on top of her head.

“What took you so long? I thought you would drop her in the nearest bed and come running back,” she said as she slipped a leg over his, and ran her toes up and down his calf, and like Sansa’s, her toes were freezing cold.

“Well, apparently I had been neglecting our little lady and she was feeling left out. She has been waiting for me, and while she was waiting, she always fell asleep,” he said, pulling Catelyn closer to him, placing his face near her head so that he could smell her hair. Like always she smelled of summer flowers and something he could only describe as uniquely Catelyn, that sweet smell of home.

“So is that why she was here?” Catelyn asked, as her hand roamed around on his chest and stomach, continuously venturing further south.

“She thought I liked our other children better, because I saw them more often than her and so she had come here to confront me on my horrendous behaviour, but always fell asleep waiting,” he explained.

“The poor thing,” Catelyn said, pressing a kiss to his collarbone.

“Yeah, so we agreed that when I can, we will read some stories together, either before she goes to sleep or sometime during the mornings,” he explained, grabbing her hand before it disappeared under the furs. Pushing her to her back, her knees parting so that he could settle between them. Her hands came around his neck, pulling his head down towards her, their lips meeting in a heated kiss. He pulled back from her lips when the need for air overtook his need for the feel of her lips, and he moved his lips to trail a line of kisses down her neck, towards her chest, his hands finding the hem of her shift and in a rush he pushed the material up to her waist as his hands grabbed at her small clothes, before going back to push the shift over his wife’s head. Just as he was about to get the shift over her head, a shriek, loud enough to wake all of Winterfell, came from the crib behind him.

Ned let out a frustrated growl, but kept on pulling the shift over her head and only her reluctance made the task unsuccessful. “If you don’t get up, she’ll just go back to sleep,” he said wistfully.

“Ned!” Catelyn exclaimed, as she pushed Ned away so that she could sit up and fix her shift. “She’s probably hungry. I cannot just let get cry,” she said, kissing him on the lips one last time, before getting out of bed.

Ned shifted over to his side of the bed, looking up to see his wife pick up their daughter and place her at her teat, and not for the first time, since arriving home after fighting the Greyjoys, did he feel resentful of his children.

Before Catelyn could settle Arya back down, Ned felt the need for sleep claim him, and so he lay back and thought to himself: “Tomorrow will be good, yeah, tomorrow.”

The End


End file.
